When the U.S. Food & Drug

When the U.S. Food & Drug Administration sent a warning letter to an Indian app developer in late May, tech entrepreneurs in this country took notice. The FDA warned Biosense Technologies Private Ltd. that its app—which is designed to work with a urine-testing kit—is actually a medical device, and therefore it must be cleared by the agency.

The large and growing community of app developers doesn't expect this to be the last time the FDA weighs in on mobile apps marketed for health-related uses. "There are millions of medical apps out there. The industry is concerned," says Gabriel Vorobiof, a Los Angeles cardiologist and co-founder of PadInMotion, a New York company developing mobile tools for hospital use. "It's just not clear how far [the FDA] will go."

Until now, the FDA has taken a largely hands-off approach to medical apps, but that could change any day. In July 2011, the agency published a draft of proposed rules for medical app developers and posted it online so the public could comment on it. Releasing the final version of those rules "is a priority for the agency and we are working to publish [a guidance document] this year," a spokesperson said in an email.

Most app developers are not shocked that the FDA is cracking down on Biosense. That's because the company markets its app, called uChek, as a tool for analyzing urine-testing strips. The FDA approves the use of those strips—but only if interpreted by a "direct visual reading." Once the mobile phone becomes the chief analyzer of the test results, the entire test system, including the app, must get separate clearance, the agency said in its letter to Biosense.

"That's not surprising," says Brad Weinberg, a partner with New York-based Blueprint Health, an incubator for medical technology startups. "Any regulated diagnostic test or medical device needs to get approved," even if it's a variation of an already-approved tool.

Related Video: A Dose of Advice for Health-Tech Startups

In an email, Biosense founder Abhishek Sen says he won't comment on the content of the FDA's letter, except to say, "We are in touch with the U.S. FDA, and will be working closely with them over the coming months to ensure that we continue to deliver accurate, affordable and convenient diagnostics across the world."

What about apps that don't make diagnoses, but still provide personalized information based on specific patients and their medical conditions? That's where the FDA's oversight could get murky. The draft guidance suggests that when apps are designed to collect information about specific patients and use it to, say, assist physicians in calculating the proper dosage of a drug, they may be subject to FDA oversight.

Nicholas Genes, an assistant professor of emergency medicine at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York and a frequent blogger on medical apps, says it's fine if the FDA steps in to ensure that new technology protects patient safety and privacy, but he'll be concerned if the agency oversteps its bounds. "If a couple of programmers have a cool idea, I would hope that the FDA doesn't stifle that, because these are the people that are driving the whole market," Genes says.

Judging from the draft guidance, many makers of health-related apps should be immune from FDA oversight. They will likely include PadInMotion because it provides access to apps via the tablet computers it makes available to hospitals but doesn't actually develop any apps itself. The draft guidance also states that apps providing wellness tools, such as nutrition advice and exercise tips, won't have to be approved.

Related Video: In Health-Care Space, Startups Tackle Big Problems

For those entrepreneurs who are subject to FDA scrutiny, however, the process can be daunting. Ryan Sysko, co-founder and CEO of Baltimore-based WellDoc, says his company spent more than two years getting FDA clearance for its first product, a diabetes app designed to help patients interact with their physicians in managing their medications, glucose testing and lifestyle choices.

Sysco says he suspected the technology would need to gain FDA approval from the time the company launched in 2005, because it was designing an app that physicians would prescribe like a drug or device. "The existing regulations were relatively clear," Sysco says. "If you look at the software regs that were written in the 1970s, we felt the types of feedback and support we were going to give patients would make us a device."

Weinberg says he advises entrepreneurs participating in Blueprint Health to start a dialogue with the FDA and their legal advisors early in the startup process so they can clarify regulatory requirements and be prepared for any resulting time and expense. And like many in his industry, he's eagerly awaiting the final word from the FDA. "It would be helpful if the FDA would be clear about its guidance," he says.

Related Video: Health-Tech Startups Ride Digital Wave

Your logo is

Your logo is the face of your company. It will often be the first thing people see and the main thing they remember. If asked, most of us could name at least a few iconic logos, whether it be Coca-Cola's cursive script or the namesake bird of Penguin Books. And that's the whole point: You invest time in crafting the perfect logo so it will stick in people's minds.

"Other people have to be able to speak for yourbrand," says Jonah Berger, author of Contagious: Why Things Catch On (Simon & Schuster, 2013) and the James G. Campbell Associate Professor of Marketing at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. "You love your company, you think your company is great, but if you're not around, what are people going to be able to remember? And what are they going to tell others?"

The best logos have several things in common. Below are Berger's five keys to a successful logo.1. The first element of many killer logos is simplicity. "A good way to think about simplicity is how many moving pieces are there in the logo," Berger says. For instance, the old Apple logo was rainbow-colored, while the current one is rendered in solid black or simple grayscale. That newfound simplicity makes the logo easy to look at, which customers appreciate.

"The easier it is to process things, the more we like those things," Berger says. For that reason, most brands want to present a simple aesthetic that is easy for consumers to digest. Other major brands such as IKEA, IBM and Coca-Cola follow this rule. "It's hard to find iconic logos that have more than two or three colors," says Berger.

2. Brand consistency.

Your logo will communicate things to consumers about your brand, so you need to ensure that its design fits your company's overall message. Consider the Apple logo again. A few decades ago, Berger says, "rainbow colors had a certain association [with] being free and easygoing," but not anymore. Whereas Apple's old logo connoted the free spirit of an upstart that was taking on staid tech giants, its current position as one of the most valuable corporations in the world calls for the sleek, futuristic logo it has now.

At the same time, Apple's logo still seems "lighter" and "friendlier" than IBM's, which is more "dark and foreboding," says Berger. "That's consistent with the message that Apple wants to suggest: We are technology, but we're friendly technology, we're easy-to-use technology." If you're starting up a new company, Berger says, you should put some serious thought into your brand's key characteristics and how you want to convey them in your logo.

3. Memorability.

Memorability is the quality that makes your logo easy for customers to recall, which leads to repeat customers and word of mouth, says Berger. Your logo should "help them remember that you exist and what you stand for," he says.

Simplicity usually makes for memorable logos, but interestingly, "a little bit of incongruity" in your logo can aid people's memory, according to Berger. If Apple's logo didn't have a bite taken out of it, he says, "it might be easier to process, but [you'd] be less likely to remember, because it looks exactly like a million things you've seen before." Put a little something different or unexpected into your logo to make it stand out from the pack.

4. Remarkability.

The remarkability of a logo is what makes it "worthy of remark," cutting through the clutter of your industry to reach customers, Berger says. TalentBin, a search engine that helps companies with talent acquisition, has a logo that exemplifies this quality. The logo consists of a cartoonish purple squirrel riding a unicorn. While it may seem ridiculous, it has a specific meaning. "In the recruiting industry, a 'purple squirrel' is a type of person who is really hard to find," Berger says. "It's a way for them to show that they're insiders, that they know the culture."

The purple squirrel is not TalentBin's primary logo, but instead is used internally, at conferences and on promotional materials given to people in the recruiting industry. "If you're an established brand, you may not want a remarkable logo," Berger says. "But if you're a startup you need to take a little more risk."

5. Market testing.

Finally, don't just trust to your gut when designing a logo, Berger says. Do market research. One way to test various logo designs is to put out a survey on a service such as Amazon's Mechanical Turk. "We could throw up a quick study for an entrepreneur for $10, and within a day get a lot of feedback from different people about how heavy or light, fast or slow a logo would be," he says. The point is not to assume that a given logo is great. Before you print up those business cards, get some independent feedback about whether your logo is saying everything you want it to say.

What are your keys to creating a stand out logo? Share your thoughts in the comments below. The best submissions will be featured with your name.

On social media,

can level the playing field between industry leaders and upstarts, between multinational corporation executives and small-business owners, making peers of all participants. Yet appearances can be deceiving. To borrow from George Orwell's Animal Farm, all social-media users are equal, but some are more equal than others.

So what makes the difference between a following of 500 and a following of 500,000? While A-list celebrities can have an advantage over most everyone else, other social media darlings have grown their base of fans more organically, and you can learn from their strategies.

What follows are five keys culled from darlings of the current social media landscape for increasing your influence in a way that can make a difference to your business strategies.

1. Produce quality content.

If you want to make your mark on social media, first and foremost you should provide quality content. "Content is twofold," says Mari Smith, a social-media marketing expert and author of The New Relationship Marketing: How to Build a Large, Loyal, Profitable Network Using the Social Web(Wiley, 2011). "It's generating your own, [being] a thought leader. The other element is what I call OPC -- other people's content -- and not being afraid to share that."

One man who successfully balances both elements is entrepreneur, investor and author Guy Kawasaki. "He's a self-professed 'firehose of content,' " says Smith. "He has a way of creating a nice blend of other people's content as well as his own thoughts and opinions." Not only that, but according to his Twitter bio, Kawasaki repeats every tweet four times in order to reach all time zones.

Quantity is not the same as quality, of course, but what is remarkable about Kawasaki, says Smith, is "his masterful ability to curate such volume. I could skim through his tweets and probably find a few things every day that I could pass on to my followers."

2. Be open and engaging.

On social media, it's important to be available to your audience, and few people exemplify that principle better, says Smith, than entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk. "On Twitter, he does a lot of responding" to followers, she says. "He treats everybody as an equal, and he responds at an amazing velocity."

What's the upside of all this time-consuming engagement for Vaynerchuk? A loyal and devoted following for his business books and priceless visibility for his consulting business, VaynerMedia. "People love it," Smith says. "If they get a response from Gary, even if it's a smiley face, they're like, "Oh my God, Gary tweeted back at me!'"

3. Focus on a specific niche.

On social media, you can either be a generalist -- producing and curating a hodge-podge of content across many different disciplines -- or you can choose to specialize in one or a few areas. Specialists tend to bend more ears than generalists, says Smith. "Social media is extremely noisy. You've got to be able to stand out," she says, and the best way to do this is to own a particular subject.

Jessica Northey, founder of Tucson, Ariz.-based social-media marketing boutique Finger Candy Media, "owns" country music, says Smith. Northey hosts a live weekly Twitter chat and Google+ "twangout" for country-music fans. This year, Forbes ranked Northey at No. 3 on its list of the Top 50 Social Media Power Influencers. She has more than half a million followers on Twitter and more than 700,000 on Google+. "In my travels, if I came across anyone in the country-music arena, Jessica would be my choice" of someone to connect them with, Smith says.

4. Use social media to build your business, and vice versa.

For an entrepreneur, time spent on social media might seem like a distraction from the more important tasks central to running a business. Because it's so time-intensive, you should back up your thought leadership on social media with a real profit-making enterprise. Chris Brogan, founder and chief executive of Human Business Works, a business-training company in Portland, Maine, is one example, says Smith. "He walks his talk. He speaks all over the world, and he consults with a lot of companies on social media."

In other words, Brogan demonstrates his expertise in blog posts, uses social platforms to broadcast those posts and then uses the resulting visibility to market himself for speaking gigs, coaching sessions and more. These, in turn, increase his social media following. And it doesn't hurt that he was able to carve out a place for himself by being an early adopter of social platforms, Smith says.

5. Embrace each social network's unique culture.

Each social network has a "unique culture," says Smith, and the best users embrace it rather than sharing identical content across platforms. Take Cory Booker, the mayor of Newark, N.J. He relies mainly on Twitter, where he has more than 1.2 million followers, and Facebook, and uses each platform in a way that takes advantage of its native capabilities.

"On Twitter, I see him retweeting people, I see him thanking people and engaging with them," Smith says. She also notes that Booker makes use of hashtags, a popular way of marking your tweets for a specific purpose or larger conversation.

On Facebook, by contrast, Booker posts less frequently. "You don't want to bombard people on Facebook," says Smith. He finds more elaborate ways to involve his community in his activities. For instance, he uploads albums of photos from various events where he has spoken.

Some power users maintain a presence on multiple networks, Smith says, but for most people two are enough. "Really you want to have Facebook and one other [platform] that you're active on," she says.

Successful people will

Successful people will often tell you that luck and hard work got them where they are. But under the surface, there's much more going on. People who rise to top of their fields have a lot in common. Learning what sets them apart can help you find lasting success in your own business.

Jeff Brown, a Harvard Medical School faculty psychologist and co-author of The Winner's Brain(DaCapo, 2010), studies highly successful people, looking at their brain activity and life stories for clues to what makes them unique.

Turns out, they think differently than those whose success peters out or never comes to pass. "People who are successful have learned to optimize their brains," Brown says.

He's uncovered strategies, which he calls "brain power tools," that successful people use to achieve their goals. Each tool is a way of thinking that affects your choices and actions as you work toward a goal. Taken together, they help you find opportunities, build mastery, work through failures and surpass the status quo.

Consider Brown's five keys to lasting success as outlined below. Give these tactics a try to reach your goals time and time again.

1. Create your own serendipity.

If you look at highly successful people, their road to greatness was full of twists and turns. "Successful people take very circuitous paths," Brown says. "They have a real knack for recognizing nontraditional opportunities."

Rather than waiting in a long line of succession, look for paths that others haven't tried. Take on projects that add a unique skill to your toolkit, find ways to meet people you admire, or pitch yourself for opportunities that seem like an unexpected match. Don't be afraid to get creative. There are many ways to reach every destination.

2. Know what you bring to the table.

Successful people take inventory of their skills and abilities regularly, and they use that feedback to improve. "If they have a deficit, they want to know it," Brown says.

Ask mentors and coaches to assess your strengths and weaknesses, and measure your skills objectively if you can. Use that information to identify what to learn or practice so that you master strengths and bolster weak skills. And don't shy away from criticism out of fear or pride, Brown says. "That's the kiss of death when it comes to success."

3. Focus on a single end goal.

The ability to choose a goal and work toward it without getting distracted is a trademark among highly successful people. "They have laser focus, which boosts their ability to think and execute," Brown says.

Create a list of priorities and use them to select which opportunities to pursue. "Don't be duped by the illusion of missed opportunity where you think you have to do everything that comes your way," Brown says. "Lock onto your goal and don't get distracted."

4. Work at the edge of your comfort zone.

Risk is necessary if you want to truly excel, and successful people approach risk with a clear sense of how much they can handle. "They take moderate risks," Brown says. "They're out of their comfort zone but not going crazy."

Test your own boundaries by looking for risks that make you slightly uncomfortable but still more excited than anxious. "You have an optimal risk range that you have to learn to gauge and understand," Brown says. The more you experiment with taking risks, big and small, the easier it will be to find your sweet spot in the future.

5. Put your energy into the daily grind.

Successful people work tirelessly toward their goals. They're propelled by an internal energy that keeps them moving forward, even when they face setbacks or success seems far away. "They keep giving to the process and keep investing," Brown says. Their drive isn't pushy or demanding. It's persistent.

Rather than always looking ahead at the end goal, immerse yourself in the daily practice of building toward it. Learning to enjoy and embrace that process will help you develop the stamina and resilience you need to see it through. "You should enjoy the pursuit of success," Brown says. "The chase lasts much longer than the catch."

What are your keys to entrepreneurial success? Share your thoughts in the comments below. The best submissions will be featured with your name.

Although there are many

Although there are many types of businesses, the challenges that growth can bring to each of them is surprisingly consistent. Knowing what these risks are, and facing them head on, can help to ensure ongoing success. Here are the core areas that should be addressed and monitored in order to ensure the health and productivity of your growing business:

Time management

Whether your business is a startup, a relatively new enterprise, or a veteran company, it is important that you clear your daily calendar of clutter that can be easily outsourced or digitized. You will also gain quality time to brainstorm creative, new ideas that can ignite even greater business expansion in the future. 

Review your business' processes

The processes your business uses to facilitate mandatory functions—payroll, tax administration, employee benefits—and to manage growth—inventory, fulfillment, customer relationship management—obviously become more important as your business moves into expansion mode. 

Give up control

As business starts to expand, the entrepreneur must evolve from a multitasking, jack-of-all-trades mindset into a big-picture leader who inspires his or her team to meet and exceed the organization's mission. Let your team do what they were hired to do and inspire them to ascend to even greater heights. 

Hire smart talent

Hiring the best talent requires a trained professional who will identify skills your ideal candidate must have. Unless such a professional is a part of your team, it is often a good idea to outsource the process to a firm that can fulfill your recruitment requirements.

Keep an eye on cash flow

A few tips that can improve your cash flow include:

• Projecting your monthly sales and expenses
• Collecting client payments as soon as possible
• Paying invoices on the last day they are due
• Setting up a cash reserve account
• Learning how to decipher financial statements
• Reconciling your monthly bank statements

Meet the demands of change successfully 

As your business develops, there is one constant challenge that you will need to confront: the element of change itself. The best way to ensure the continued growth of your business is to approach the demands that change brings from a strategic perspective. Addressing these challenges head on will ensure the health and productivity of your growing business for years to come. 

 
Want to learn more? Call 888.874.6388 or go to TriNet.com/incredible. It's time to start achieving some incredible results of your own.

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Are you ready to turn your inspirational business vision into action? Once you spot an opportunity that you simply can’t pass up, there are calculated steps to turn your vision into reality, and finding financing is usually at the top of the list. Whether you need to borrow $5,000, $50,000, or $500,000, the tips in this article will help you understand what a lender looks for in a business plan. 

Tip 1: Third Party Review

Before you start looking around for a lender, you need to write a business plan, and you need to have it reviewed by a business advisor or a mentor, such as Small Business BC. As an independent third party, they will help you focus on areas that are most important to a lender. Warning: these may not be areas that you’re most interested in! As an entrepreneur, you probably have a high tolerance for risk. But most lenders are the opposite. They love numbers, figures, and concrete research that show business viability. 

Tip 2: Be Clear About What You are Selling 

Your marketing plan needs to show the lender that you’re clear about what you’re selling, who’s going to buy it and why and how you’re going to reach those buyers. Explain what you’re selling in plain English. This may seem obvious, but a lot of plans leave lenders guessing what the product or service being sold is, or why anyone would buy it. 

Tip 3: Explain About the ‘Who’

Tell the lender about the ’who‘: Who your customers will be, how much they’ll spend, and why they’ll buy from you. Tell the lender who your suppliers are, and if you have signed contracts or letters of intent to purchase. Who are your main competitors? And what makes your business different or better than theirs? Present your prospective lenders with a fresh take on a tired industry, and you will grab their attention.

Tip 4: Know Your Industry 

Convince the lender that you really know your industry. You need to prove that there’s a demand for your product or service, so be sure to show that you’ve researched and understand the key trends in your industry.

Tip 5: Know How Much Money You Need 

This may seem obvious, but know how much you need, versus how much you want; there is a difference. And, for what purpose? 

For example, are you purchasing equipment or are you managing cash flow?  Tell the lender how you plan to repay the loan. You need to show how you plan to generate enough revenue to cover your operating expenses plus pay the lender back. 

Tip 6: Identify Your Assumptions 

Clearly identify all the assumptions in your business plan. Assumptions are the details about your start-up costs, such as how much you’ll invest in marketing, or how much inventory you need to have on hand. Some may be estimates, but you need to demonstrate that you’ve thought about all the little details. 

Tip 7: Show Your Own Investment 

Lenders want to see that you have enough confidence in your success to risk your own money before they’ll risk their members’ or shareholders’ money.  And most lenders will want to see your investment (or equity) of at least 10% of what you need in your financial projections.

Tip 8: Cash Flow, Cash Flow, Cash Flow 

Over 90% of declined loan applications are declined because the cash flow projections don’t convince the lender that the business will make enough to repay the loan. Lenders need to see that your assumptions are supported by concrete evidence from the industry, your own past sales, or even your competition’s sales, if you can get those. 

So, why is the tip “cash flow, cash flow, cash flow”? Because lenders want to see not one, not two, but three cash flow scenarios: one with conservative sales, one with realistic sales, and one with aggressive projections. 

Tip 9: Demonstrate Your Team’s Qualifications 

When a lender looks at the operations plan for your business, he or she wants to see proof that your management team will be able to run a successful and profitable business. Who’s running the show? Your operations plan is all about naming names. Tell the lender who’ll be doing what in your business, and what are their qualifications and track records. 

Tip 10: Disaster Planning

Give your worst case scenarios, or what I like to call, “Disaster Planning”. It might sound strange, but you have to tell the lender how you’re going to handle the risk that no one will buy your product or service. A lender needs to see a contingency plan of how you would pay back the loan if your sales don’t meet expectations or if your expenses are higher than anticipated.  A well-developed and thoughtful business plan shows that you’ve thought through different scenarios and changing circumstances, which will give the lender significant confidence in your operations.  

After digesting all of these tips, consider this last (and most important) piece of advice: Quite simply, the most effective business plans are ones that convey that  you want to make some money and have a good time while doing something you love.